A Marketing Approach

Marketers of alcohol, tobacco, analgesics and tranquillizers are highly sophisticated manipulators of community behaviour and attitudes. The milieu they create helps shape the problem faced by drug and alcohol workers. The public sector needs to understand these strategies before it can hope to develop its own, and to use its comparative advantages effectively. Opportunities in fiscal and legislative policy, education, professional and community areas need to be researched and developed systematically. This requires a marketing approach to the problem.